


Dancing On My Own

by inmylife



Category: NU'EST
Genre: Coming Out, Mild Angst, i arranged this song for a capella and now it's stuck in my head and won't leave help, i have a lot of feelings about ren liking this song tbh, ren-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-17
Updated: 2017-11-17
Packaged: 2019-02-03 17:33:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12752949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inmylife/pseuds/inmylife
Summary: "Minki plays the song day and night, blasts it from speakers or plays it through his headphones going to sleep."





	Dancing On My Own

**Author's Note:**

> set in the same universe as "missing minhyun.", but chronologically earlier. i'll link the other fic as soon as i know how ahah

After Produce 101, Minki hears the song for the first time.

  
Dancing On My Own comes up on his recommendations playlist, and some LOㅅE had commented on his Instagram saying he should listen as well. So he plays the song… and instantly falls in love with it.

  
Minki plays the song day and night, blasts it from speakers or plays it through his headphones going to sleep. He starts dancing, tentatively, to Robyn's synth-filled original, and then his dancing gains confidence and he has a whole routine worked out. But, as always happens when he plays a song too often, he gets sick of it.  
That's when he searches it on Youtube, looking for the music video because despite obsessing over the song for two weeks he's never watched it, and stumbles upon the Calum Scott version instead, and cries, because damn he misses Minhyun, he misses his kids, he misses how things used to be dammit he misses being seventeen and having hope and faith for his debut he misses he misses he misses

  
So he finds other covers, Nick Goldston and Anna Danielyan and Aron Brink and Pentatonix, and he plays them all the time. Keeps playing that song until one day Jonghyun hyung slams open the door and tells him to stop. And Minki grimaces but he does it, because something about the look on Jonghyun's face was sad and even though Minki doesn't deal in emotions he'll do anything for their leader. He puts his headphones under the pillow to avoid temptation and goes to the kitchen for food, maybe ramyeon or gimbap. Aron hyung accosts him instead.

  
"It's making them sad," he tells Minki, almost without warning, and Minki jumps because he hadn't seen their oldest member there.

  
"The song?"

  
"Yeah. It's just… it's sad, you know? And Dongho, you know, between his dad and Minhyun and the other Produce kids and the stress of the comeback - well, I don't need to tell you." Minki nods. "And we all know how Jonghyun feels."

  
What's between Jonghyun and Minhyun was never really openly acknowledged in the dorm, and when it was it was only really by Aron. Maybe Aron's American upbringing had made him more comfortable with it, but even Minki - Minki who came out to the group before Produce - won't breach it. Minki knows that Minhyun had been Jonghyun's rock, knows that their leader has seriously bad anxiety and relied on Minhyun for support, knows that Minhyun definitely feels something because he'd walked in on the two one time when Jonghyun was asleep and caught Minhyun kissing Jonghyun on the head. Minki had raised his eyebrows and then gotten himself some water and neither of them spoke of it again.

  
Minki loves his members, he wouldn't hurt them for the world, but he's listened to that song enough that the lyrics feel like home to him. So he promises Aron that he'll just listen to it with headphones from now on. Goes back to his room. Puts on the original. And dances.

  
When Minki dances, he forgets, he loses himself in the beat and the movement and all the stress goes away. So he dances and dances and dances, and suddenly it's midnight.

  
Jonghyun knocks. "Minki-ah, can I come in?"

  
Minki doesn't hear at first - he's trying to perfect the finishing measures of his dance routine - but then the song stops and he hears the tail end of his leader's question. He walks over and opens the door. "Sure. What's up?"

  
"Sorry for yelling at you about the song earlier."

  
He hadn't yelled, Jonghyun rarely yells. He'd just seemed frustrated.  
"Aron hyung said it was making you and Dongho upset. So it's okay."

  
"I had a talk with Dongho. He told me he would watch Pokemon with me and then he said we needed to talk." Jonghyun isn't meeting his eyes. "I… we all have our own ways of dealing with stress right now, and I should just let you be."

  
Minki shrugs. "Like you said, we're all stressed."

  
Jonghyun flops onto the empty bed. Minki and Jonghyun sleep in the same room now that Minhyn abandoned the room he and the maknae used to share, but that room is Minki's room in name only. For all intents and purposes, Minki uses his old room for everything except sleeping. "I have to start filming that variety next week, I…"

  
Minki lies down next to him. "You'll be fine. If all else fails, just do some aegyo. You'll be the maknae there, after all - it'll be your job." They laugh. "But seriously, you said Jung Hyungdon sunbae is doing this too? He took a break for mental stuff a couple years ago. You can talk to him if you need to." He reaches out and takes Jonghyun's hand. "You're better at this kind of thing than you think you are."

  
Jonghyun turns and gives Minki a look. "Since when are you all comforting like this?"

  
Minki shrugs. "Yeah, it's weird. I… I know you're sick of the song, but do you want to see the dance I made?" 

  
"You choreographed something?"

  
"It's kind of bad…" Minki trails off, suddenly self-conscious. He isn't sure why he suggested this in the first place - but dancing is safer territory than emotions, maybe that's why. Then again, that doesn't work, he's poured so much of himself into this song that it's really like shoving his emotions into Jonghyun's hands, displaying them for all to see.

  
He's reminded, oddly (or not so oddly?) of when he came out to the group. Facing disbandment, before the lifeline of Produce 101 was thrown to them.

_  
"If we disband," he said, breaking a heavy silence, "there's - something I want you to know."_

_  
"We'll pull through, we can -" protested Minhyun, but his heart wasn't in it and Minki could tell._

_  
"No." Minki cut him off. These four boys were his brothers, he trusted them on this matter more than he trusted his parents._

_  
"We might not, Minhyun…" Jonghyun's face was heavy. Dongho was silent, staring at the floor. They had come from a meeting with their manager. Things were bad. Nu'est was near the end, Nu'est was on life support, so Minki had to tell them while he still could._

_  
"I, um. I'm." The tension in his stomach was worse than it was in that godforsaken office at company HQ. For a moment, Minki lost his nerve, contemplating in a flash telling them never mind and moving on._

_"I. I like boys. I'm gay."_

_  
As a kid, Minki's friends had talked to him about revealing crushes. It was nerve-wracking until you'd done it, they said. Then it felt like a sigh of relief._

_  
Coming out felt like a sigh of relief. And Aron next to him wrapped him in a hug, whispering that he was proud._

  
"Whenever you're ready," says Jonghyun, and Minki snaps out of his thoughts.

  
His favorite version is the Pentatonix version, it keeps the energy of the original while still bearing so much emotion. So that's the one Minki plays, placing his phone onto the docker and stepping back in the two seconds before the music starts.

  
Head down. Reach out. Twist. Arms to the left. Over his heart. Chest forward, head snap up, turn, step step roll his neck. Minki closes his eyes and forgets Jonghyun's watching, doesn't hear the door open and the other two come in. But the final harmony has to happen sometime and as he comes back into himself and looks up, he's shocked by the presence of not one but three members sitting on the bare bed.

  
"That was amazing, Minki-ah," says Aron softly. Jonghyun looks stricken, and he and Dongho are holding hands tightly.

  
"Play it as many times as you want if that's what you're going to do with it," Jonghyun says, and so comes the sigh of relief, as it had after debuting, after coming out, after first win.

  
Minki knows that, as long as he has his members, he'll never dance alone.


End file.
